The first wave of COVID-19 vaccines is now globally being carried out, with an estimated 65M doses administered already.
It is a sign of relief for many across the Earth. However, some of the vaccines require cautious handling and storage for them to be viable.
The first vaccine approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and co-developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, must be kept at a temperature ranging between -80°C and -60°C in cold storage, and between 2°C and eight °C for up to five days in a refrigerator before being administered. If the doses were left outside the required temperature windows, those doses should be discarded.
Last week, a piece of news broke out that the UK’s South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust had tapped the software company named Everyware and distributed ledger technology firm Hedera Hashgraph to track the temperature of the Pfizer vaccine throughout the transportation and storage process. Because of the internet-connected thermometers in the refrigerators, temperatures are automatically recorded in Hedera’s system.
The co-founder and CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, Mance Harmon, described the process and the benefits of using his firm’s blockchain-like distributed ledger technology.
“Everyware is monitoring the temperature of the vaccine, both in the data centers and at the hospitals. And that information flows through our system, and becomes tamper-proof information that people then can depend on in the future, to know exactly what the state of the vaccine was when it happened,” stated Harmon.
“There is no opportunity for it to be changed or tampered with. And then that information can be used for analytics by anyone in the industry that wants to know what was going on with the vaccine.”
Harmon cited many examples of companies that use the Hedera Hashgraph to track vaccines and pharmaceuticals. He has also spoken about the idea of a so-called “slippery slope,” that tracking and tracing can lead to privacy concerns down the line.
“The customers that are using the platform today obviously are doing that with the very best of intentions,” he said, but elaborated that developing ethical policies and governance around the technology is “something that we as a society are going to have to grapple within the years to come.”
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